Hélène Cixous: Writing the Feminine

Born in Algeria in 1937, Hélène Cixous achieved world fame for her short stories, criticism, and fictionalized autobiography (Dedans, 1969). Her work quickly became controversial because it frankly tested a distinction between male and female writing. Her literary experiments and her conclusions make her one of the most stimulating and most elusive feminist theorists of our time. Verena Andermatt Conley, a professor of French and women’s studies at Miami University, has written the first full-length study of Cixous in English. Looking at Cixous as writer, teacher, and theoretician, Conley takes up Cixous’s ongoing exploration of the “feminine” as related to the “masculine”—words not to be equated with “woman” and “man”—and her search for a terminology less freighted with emotion and prejudgment. Conley has updated this paperback edition with a new preface, bibliography, and interview with Cixous conducted by the editors of Hors Cadre .